Search: 'UEFA'

Rangers have joined Celtic in admitting they want to leave the Scottish Premier League. Gary Oliver thinks it can't happen soon enough

The new Premier League season had barely begun when BBC Scotland breathlessly announced that Ran­gers and Celtic intend to quit Scottish football, the pair ganging up with soul mates from abroad within two years. For viewers who had just switched over to Friday Sportscene from Channel 4, and who felt they had heard this one before, it was perhaps appropriate that the story was broken straight after Eurotrash.

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Day 18 of the WSC advent calendar and we are joining Leicester City’s journey following a star. As they prepared, in October 2000, issue 164, to visit Red Star Belgrade, Dragomir Pop-Mitic reported on the civil unrest in Yugoslavia

“We are ready to organise the match and all Leicester City supporters will be welcomed and completely safe,” said an official from Red Star Belgrade after the UEFA Cup draw was an­nounced. Whether Leicester are able to trav­el to Yugoslavia remains to be seen, though UEFA have insisted they will forfeit the game if they don’t. The British government may not be prepared to grant permission and the Mil­osevic regime will be nervous too, since the match will take place a few days after a domestic election which it cannot afford to lose

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Tuesday 1 George Weah signs for Man City, saying: “I think this club deserves to get into Europe and that is the aim.” Steve Coppell leaves Crystal Palace to be replaced by another former manager Alan Smith.

Wednesday 2 Intertoto defeats for Bradford, beaten 3-0 at home by St Petersburg, and Villa, who lose 2-1 to Celta Vigo. The Swiss referee, who dismisses two Villa players and one from the visitors, ends the match two minutes early and has to restart. “He was an embarrassment to UEFA,” snarls John Gregory. David Hodgson resigns as Darlington manager after chairman George Reynolds asks the players to take a pay cut.

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Ian Plenderleith discovers a brave new world of websites

If you only buy World Soccer to pore over results and league tables from impossibly distant lands, but despair that the scores are usually two months old, then help is at hand. The website of the Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation is a football statistician’s wet dream of both archived and bang up to date results and standings from anywhere in the world where a football is kicked in earnest.

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Thursday 1 After a week of indecision Martin O’Neill finally takes over at Celtic, saying: “You would be mad to think you could repeat what Jock Stein did, but I am mad.” Steve Walsh is to apply for the Leicester vacancy, with Tony Cottee as his assistant. Somehow you expect them to be turned down. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink joins Chelsea for, ulp, £15 million and declares: “I am going to give 100 per cent, but will that be enough?” Libya’s gold reserves may be under threat after it is announced that Terry Venables is the preferred choice to succeed Carlos Bilardo as national coach.

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